For 3 years, I’ve worked towards one goal: developing my project named PLATFORM (http://platform-mag.fr It is a multi-dimensional space dedicated to emerging and alternative fashion. The major portion of this project is happening on Instagram. It has curation and a lot of information to allow me to work and keep my business afloat. As a small business, social media are an efficient way to be visible, share with our community and generate tangible resources to allow us to live. Through the years I gathered 13,2K followers. We represent a community with hopes, aspirations and dreams. 

For a few weeks, my account has been disabled for “violating the terms”. As I’m very aware of the importance of respecting the restrictions imposed by Instagram, this business account displays at all time responsible content. After doing a lot of research, I noticed that the platform has been disabling a lot of accounts randomly, sometimes some are from businesses as in my case and they are struggling to have assistance for their problem. In that case, you have 2 options: 

The first one is to fill the form through the Help Centre and then send identification pictures - for a lack of other means, I've been doing this every single day since my business account has been disabled. 
You can also try to reach Facebook business support through Messenger however the concierges are always stating that they are not in the position to help you. 

After contacting the Business platform via Messenger for the previous 72 hours, one of the concierges told me that I had no chance to recover my account since the process of identification had failed. As of today, I wasn’t provided with any clear reason: they didn’t explicitly point to the terms were violated. Furthermore, no process to contest or defend my case was provided either. While I would understand such drastic decisions in the case of inappropriate content, in the case of PLATFORM no such content was shared with my 13,2K followers. Due to my account being disabled, my business is now on hold with no clear timeframe for a potential resolution. 

For security users and regulations, Facebook has changed a lot of their policies, which resulted in deleting numerous “fake accounts”. The consequences of such approaches is that mistakes can be made. In other words, if Facebook was able to correct their mistakes by providing real client/user services, I would not be in this situation today. I find it very hard for a big and important company such as Facebook to not have any reachable services to fix these kinds of problems. We are all aware of the fact that social media are now also part of a larger world related to business. It is not only about interacting with people, it is also about building a business, a project and ultimately a career. A lot of professional interaction happens on this platform. Hence we shouldn’t have to face such difficulties, stress and despair when a technical problem happening on their side occurs. We should have someone able to take charge of our case and in capacity to give us a timeframe in order to not let us wait indefinitely. From a business perceptive, time is essential. Moreover, Facebook should have a clear process of escalation when disabling accounts - which currently doesn’t exist at all. Then, they should not put their users - especially businesses - in such a position when we don’t know exactly what happened on the account and what has been violated. We should have the right to have our data from our accounts since they are coming from us, the users. 

I’ve spent 3 years of my life creating this project, this community, this curation. This work cannot be replaced and I risk losing this project when the mistake is not even coming from my activity. I tried to join a lot of people from the inside through other platforms, but it is very hard to be heard in this vast ecosystem. I’ve been desperate, experienced insomnia and a lot of anxiety since Instagram disabled my business account. In times of global pandemic and a lot of uncertainty, I feel it is even harder to face such problems. We had to struggle to keep our work afloat during this emergency. Thanks to my account I was able to keep a certain financial stability. Now my career and life overall are in peril - when again these disabling procedures are hazardous. 

This petition aimed to force Facebook to review its restrictions methods for accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, we need to have more human contact to be able to defend our case and present our problems. Not being heard while you are a victim brings a lot of frustrations and despair. I think honestly in a way it is a lack of respect of our users/consumers/client rights.